About Pinterest:
Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we’re on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.
Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other’s unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It’s Possible.
At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we’re looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we’ll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.
Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process here.
We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical direction of the backend systems powering Pinterest's AI-driven product experiences — Pinterest Assistant, visual editing and content creation tools and future LLM-based products. You'll design and ship backend systems while architecting the broader platform strategy that enables these experiences to scale across surfaces and teams. This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll move between deep technical execution, system-level architecture and cross-team technical leadership.
What you'll do:
- Define the backend and platform architecture for AI-driven product experiences — visual-chat, AI image generation and editing, and agentic or LLM-based products — partnering with Engineering, Product, ML and UX leaders to shape the technical vision and roadmap.
- Architect end-to-end systems spanning API layers, orchestration, logging, evaluation, storage and safety controls, ensuring solutions scale across multiple products and teams.
- Lead resolution of complex technical challenges — e.g., scaling LLM inference for real-time features, balancing latency vs. quality in AI-generated content, and standardizing backend capabilities for reuse.
- Design and implement production backend systems including API endpoints, orchestration layers, data models, caching strategies and integrations with Pinterest's LLM infrastructure.
- Use AI to accelerate prototyping, evaluation design and code generation, while applying judgment and verification to ensure correctness and quality.
- Create and evolve shared tooling and evaluation frameworks for LLM-based experiences, including offline eval pipelines, A/B testing hooks, quality metrics and observability.
- Guide the design of projects with significant complexity and ambiguity spanning multiple teams — setting technical direction, reviewing critical design docs and driving alignment across cross-functional partners.
- Raise the bar on operational excellence by improving monitoring, alerting, incident response, capacity planning and service health — and mentor engineers to develop stronger ownership habits and grow into technical leaders.
What we’re looking for:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Minimum of 6 years of backend software engineering experience with a track record of leading and shipping projects with substantial impact on team-level or org-level goals.
- Experience operating as a technical leader for large, ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives spanning one or more teams.
- Strong Python development skills — you write idiomatic, well-structured, maintainable Python and can confidently navigate and improve large codebases.
- Experience building on top of distributed systems — you've designed, built and operated services at scale, with strong judgment around caching, async processing, data storage tradeoffs, choosing existing database, indexing, and queueing solutions.
- Experience building LLM-powered or ML-backed products in production — you understand model integration, prompt and orchestration strategies, evaluation, latency/cost tradeoffs and operational challenges of AI-backed services.
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day-to-day workflow, with a clear approach to validating accuracy and quality of AI-assisted work.
- High integrity and ownership: you protect sensitive data, avoid over-reliance on AI and remain accountable for final decisions and deliverables.
In-Office Requirement Statement:
- We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're not always working in an office, but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection.
- This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.
Relocation Statement:
- This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.
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At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.
Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.
Our Commitment to Inclusion:
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
- At least 6 years of backend software engineering experience
- Track record of leading and shipping projects with substantial team-level or organization-level impact
- Experience serving as a technical leader for large, ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives spanning one or more teams
- Strong Python development skills, including writing idiomatic, maintainable code and navigating large codebases
- Experience designing, building, and operating distributed services at scale
- Understanding of caching, asynchronous processing, data storage, database, indexing, and queueing tradeoffs
- Experience building LLM-powered or machine-learning-backed products in production
- Understanding of model integration, prompt and orchestration strategies, evaluation, latency and cost tradeoffs, and operational challenges
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve day-to-day workflow speed and quality while validating accuracy
- High integrity, ownership, sensitive-data protection, and accountability for final decisions and deliverables
Pinterest Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Pinterest and has not been reviewed or approved by Pinterest.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Compensation is considered competitive in core technical roles, with clearly defined base, bonus, and RSU components. Vesting schedules and pay elements are articulated clearly, supporting visibility into total rewards.
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Parental & Family Support — Policies include substantial paid parental leave globally alongside fertility and family‑building benefits, adoption assistance, and dedicated caregiver supports. Communications also highlight a phased return‑to‑work approach.
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Flexible Benefits — PinFlex enables role‑dependent hybrid/remote work with home‑office, connectivity, and commuter support, plus the option to work internationally for a limited period with approval. Time away is reinforced by a paid company shutdown and generous vacation framing.
Pinterest Insights
What We Do
Pinterest is the visual inspiration platform people around the world use to shop products personalized to their taste, find ideas to do offline and discover the most inspiring creators. Today, more than 460 million people come to the platform every month to explore and experience billions of ideas that have been saved. We’re proud to help people to discover and do what they love.
